


Closeted

by ArtemisRae



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Romance, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-27
Updated: 2007-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:02:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRae/pseuds/ArtemisRae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katara and Aang seek escape from the boring party and create a party of their own in the Earth King's linen closet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closeted

**Author's Note:**

> In the grand tradition of Juxtaposie's "Throne of the Soul" and "Just Desserts" and my own "Midnight Labors", featuring our favorite theme of Katara and Aang fooling around in Inappropriate Places. Katara and Aang are meant to be an adult engaged couple in this fic - any comments/concerns re: their age will be laughed at.

* * *

One of Aang's many duties as Avatar involved playing the diplomat: giving his brightest grin, nodding, and agreeing with whatever words were coming out of whatever Very Important Ambassador speaking to him at the moment. It was a role that came naturally to him – Katara often remarked that people were generally attracted to Aang because of his cheerful countenance – but it was also a task that he sometimes found insufferable, especially at occasions like this, in which he was wearing itchy formal clothes and trying to keep himself from gazing longingly across the room at his betrothed, courteously dancing with one of the Earth King's advisors while another advisor droned on in front of him.

"And then I said to the Earth King, sir, that of course the bear would prefer the chocolate pudding to the vanilla-"

"And he did?" Aang feigned interest, momentarily breaking his focus off of Katara long enough to wonder if it was healthy for bears to be given such a dessert.

"Of course he did! And I really think that showed the King how valuable I can be, in the decision making process-"

Aang couldn't help tuning out again as the song ended, the partners bowed, and Katara started making her way over to the pair. Slowly, hoping to make the gesture natural looking, he brought a hand up to the ear that was facing her and gave a sharp tug on his earlobe, masking the action by pretending to scratch his head. He and Katara had attended many balls, and tugging on his ear was an unmistakable signal that he wanted desperately out of the conversation.

To his dismay, however, Katara continued to walk right on past him, her steps not even slowing as Aang choked back a squeal and resisted the urge to rock up on his toes.

Fighting the urge to rub his rear where she'd pinched him, he shot her a look, eyes following the tilt of her head. There were thick drapes against the wall she was casually directing him towards, and Aang knew, without a doubt, what she had just informed him of.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as she gracefully excused herself from her partner and worked her way towards the drapes, behind which, no doubt, there was a door used only by servants.

His turn.

He held up a hand, interrupting the advisor in the middle of a sentence. "Hold that thought! I'm afraid I must excuse myself to - ah!" His salvation came in the form of Sokka, whom Aang gratefully seized by the shoulders and positioned right where he'd been standing. "Here, talk to Sokka, he knows exactly what you're talking about." Sokka, his mouth stuffed with some sort of flakey pastry from the dessert trays, immediately looked panicked, but the advisor merely started talking to him instead of the Avatar and he was forced to cease shooting daggers at Aang.

Aang didn't even look back as he tried, as stealthily as possible, to get out the door. There was one near miss as another advisor, this one the Earth King's favorite and not so easily shaken off, caught sight of him and started speeding towards him, but, to Aang's eternal gratitude, Toph intervened in the form of the tiniest kick against the floor. The advisor tripped and nearly planted into one of the waiters.

The door led, as he had suspected, to a hallway behind the ballroom and eventually to the kitchens. He peered down the torch-lit path, walking slowly when a closet door next to him burst open: something snagged him by the wrist, and dragged him inside before slamming the door shut again.

It took him a second to get oriented, and by the time his light-adjusted vision faded enough to let him realize that he'd been pulled into a linen closet, Katara already had him back up against one set of shelves, her mouth on one of his earlobes while her hand tugged at his shirt.

"Huh," Aang said conversationally, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her closer to him. "A linen closet. We haven't been in one of these since-"

Katara pulled away to blink at him thoughtfully. Running her tongue over her bottom lip - Aang's fingers involuntarily clenched at her waist - she mused, "Since... Toph's birthday in Omashu last year?"

Aang nodded and dipped his head, brushing his lips over hers and working his way down, over her chin and to her neck. "S'not as good as the linen closet in Zuko's palace."

Katara hummed in agreement. "All those silks... too bad he put a lock on the door."

Aang let out a breathy laugh, making her gasp slightly when his hot breath brushed her skin. "Too bad he put two more locks on after you broke the first one."

The blush that had already started on Katara's cheeks instantly flushed to a glowing red, and in delight Aang kissed her chastely in the middle of her forehead – it was a simple fact that when the pair of them got caught up silly things like locks on doors and clothing and whoever might be in the immediate vicinity were forgotten. It could be a little inconvenient, but for the most part he couldn't complain, especially when it led to moments like this, when she had him backed up against a shelf full of soft linens with her equally soft mouth trailing slow kisses down his jaw and neck.

When she did things like that it was hard for him to think, and absently Aang reached up and tugged on one of the flimsy looking sticks keeping her hair pulled up into its elegant style, wanting to let her it down so he could run his fingers through it – one of his very favorite things to do, as she normally kept her hair pulled back and so very rarely let it down, and even more rarely let anyone else touch it.

The moment she felt the ornament shift in her hair, however, Katara pulled away, frowning at him and already scrambling to make sure Aang hadn't done irreparable damage. "Don't."

"I like your hair," Aang murmured, tightening his arms around her waist and gathering her up again for another languid kiss, taking his time and letting it deepen as he opened his mouth against hers.

"If you mess my hair up…" Katara informed him breathlessly when she finally pulled away, now pressed against him as well as she could manage in their standing position and through their unwieldy formal clothes, "then Sokka will know what we've been doing."

Aang cringed. Sokka took his self-imposed duties as a big brother seriously. The as-yet-to-be married couple had been on the receiving end of his lectures more than once, no matter how many times Katara protested loudly that he did whatever he pleased whenever he pleased with the various maidens he dated and then threatened to freeze his underwear to his body.

"What's wrong?" Katara asked suddenly, noticing Aang's abrupt stillness. Her arms were still clutching his shoulders as she leaned against him, but all other movement had ceased.

"N-Nothing," Aang answered vaguely, his hands starting to move in gentle circles at the small of her back. "I was just thinking of your brother."

"_What_?"

It took Aang a moment to realize why her tone had been so horrified and then he blushed beet red right up to the tips of his ears. "Not like that! I-" he cut himself off with a nervous snort, and then intoned in a raspy imitation of Sokka, "_Now you two aren't man and wife until spring! Spring! That means two beds and hands where I can see them_!"

Katara let out a choked giggle as well, dropping her forehead to his chest as she tried to muffle the sounds. Aang let his head drop as well, planting small kisses at her hairline and enjoying the scent of her hair while she worked her giggles out. A moment later, however, he realized that her little laughs had petered out and that her hands were moving again, now to his front, brushing his stomach as she toyed with the waist of his trousers and tugged at his tunic.

She succeeded, and her cool fingers brushed his abdomen, the muscles tightening under her touch, and Aang cupped her chin and brought her back up into another kiss, this one a little more heated, and suddenly Aang was wondering why they had been wasting so much time talking.

His hands moved on their own, coming up to grasp Katara by the elbows, and then they were stumbling and Katara was the one pushed against the stacks of green blankets and sheets on the climbing shelves – one stack had tumbled from the shelf from the force of their impact, and Katara had let out a tiny yelp right into his mouth as the sheets hit their shoulders, startling her.

Aang was entirely focused on his mission. Katara's hands had dipped under his waistband and were resting on his hips, and when she bit his earlobe he groaned, feeling as though every nerve in his body was awake and tense, all for want of her. Trembling fingers fumbled with the ties to her dress, but all he succeeded in doing was knotting the delicate strings going up her back even worse than before, and finally giving into his frustration he braced her against the shelf they were leaning against, reached down, and started bunching up her skirt, wrestling with several layers of silk and cotton before he finally broke through and found one smooth leg.

"Aang," Katara sounded strained, and his eyes flicked back up to look at her flushed face before returning to the task at hand. "You can't – we can't – don't fool around! They're going to miss us!"

With a groan he leaned into her, pressing into her fully and burying his face in her neck. "No they won't."

"Just hurry up!" Katara breathed, her eyes closed as she focused on his hands skimming her thighs and hips. "Don't tease."

"Don't rush!" he argued back, and then in the blink of an eye Katara's leg had wormed its way around his knee and pulled, causing it to buckle. He landed flat on his back, the sheets that had fallen from the shelf trapped uncomfortably under him while his head hit the stone floor.

Before he could even make a move, Katara was on top of him, her warm thighs straddling his hips and her hands braced firmly on his chest.

"I said we had to hurry," she said decisively, and then she wiggled her hips against him. Aang's eyes rolled to the back of his head.

"You're absolutely right. _Hurry_," he choked out in response.

* * *

"Zian!"

With a sigh, one of the earthbenders unlucky enough to draw the short straw and be assigned guard duty for the ball lifted his rounded helmet and peered at the maid who was rushing towards him.

"What's the matter?" he asked in a bored tone. The maids were known for getting hysterical over nothing.

This maid was wringing a towel between her hands. "A couple's taken up in the linen closet and-"

Zian raised a hand to spare her the embarrassment. "I'll scare them out."

It wasn't unusual, when the Earth King threw on of these obscene galas, for couples to sneak off into hidden places. Nobles very rarely heard the word no and were used to getting their way, and servants often looked for escape from their duties. He'd pulled more than one red-faced couple out of a closet or a carriage or an empty office before, and this couple certainly wouldn't be the last. It was embarrassing, and even more so when a very much married nobleman was caught with one of the servant girls, which was normally the case in these situations.

He followed the maid to the closet in question and stepped forward, intending to wrench the door open and give his best bellow of, "Blessed badger moles, what would the Avatar say?!"

Before he could do anything, however, the knob had rattled and popped open, and out spilled the Avatar himself, along with the waterbender who was making futile attempts to smooth the wrinkled silk of her skirt.

The maid gave a shriek of half-terror, the towel she'd been mangling now balled in front of her mouth, and the guilty pair froze at the sound. The Avatar looked at the guard, then at the maid, and back to the guard again, an expression of surprise and embarrassment on his face.

Then his face shifted into a pleasant smile, and Aang stood up straight, saluted to the guard, and said smartly, "Evening sir. Just inspecting your linens. Very soft. Give my compliments to your maid staff."

The maid gave a scandalized gasp, but Zian couldn't help the grin that rose up on his face. "Will do. Enjoy your evening,"

The Avatar nodded, and, wrapping an arm around Katara's waist, swept her back out the door that led to the Earth King's ball.

"Well," Zian shrugged, "at least _he_ was with his betrothed."

For a moment the guard and the maid stood there in front of the linen closet. The maid still looked mortified, but Zian was merely wondering how he was going to explain to the Earth King exactly _why_ the linen closet now needed a lock.

* * *


End file.
